New York panorama : a comprehensive view of the metropolis, Part 9

Author:
Publication date: 1938
Publisher: New York : Random House
Number of Pages: 630

USA > New York > New York City > New York panorama : a comprehensive view of the metropolis > Part 9

Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

urt From 1915 to 1926, when foreign news was steadily increasing in the Ness, Washington news was decreasing. This condition reflected the curi- s fact that, although New Yorkers had learned to know the world, they Quere still strangers to the United States. Beyond the city limits, everything tuas "the sticks"-useful as a market for New York products, to be sure, Tut unimportant otherwise. The factors having to do with the purchasing Yower of that market were as little known to the average New Yorker as e same foreign trade factors once had been. For years New York had en virtually the capital of the United States. The money was there, the entwer was there, and national policies were created by that money and maat power. Washington was merely the loudspeaker through which New dork announced itself-and the inconsiderable amount of Washington ef ws proved it.

The election of 1932 changed all that. The nation, facing a very serious

80 HISTORY

emergency, turned its eyes to Washington in 1933 precisely as it had tur.o them to Europe in 1914-18. The future of the country depended to a la degree on what was done in Washington. People wanted to know. Ag the press met their demands, and again New Yorkers expanded their vi point.

Today the long march and countermarch from colony to cosmopc from Peter Minuit's little settlement on the lower tip of Manhattan Isl. to the vast machine of the modern city, has gained for the moment a bilization point. Worship of the grandiose is no longer enough. New Y has grown up to the beginnings of a cosmopolitan maturity. What she do with it, how she will divert the terrific flume of her energy into orderly dynamos of social realization, the years ahead must determine.

Where New Yorkers Live

SOME NEW YORKERS LIVE BEHIND WROUGHT-IRON BALCONIES OF THE MID-19TH CENTURY

林餐

-2

الأ

الخير

STABLES TURNED STUDIOS IN MACDOUGAL ALLEY, GREENWICH VILLAGE

DWELLERS ON CENTRAL PARK WEST LOOK OUT UPON BRIDLE PATHS AND LANDSCAPED GARDENS

BAKERY

TAILORING CLEANING

PERZY GFOUND

PUSHCARTS AT THE FRONT DOOR, CLOTHES-LINES AT THE BACK, FOR EAST SIDE TENANTS

HO TRAFFIC NO PARKING,

A PARK AVENUE ADDRESS IS A SOCIAL ASSET

----

FT FFFF

====

----

-----

-- -

WEALTHY NEW YORKERS MAY LIVE IN RESIDENCE HOTELS OVERLOOKING

CENTRAL PARK

BROOKLYN

THE LESS FORTUNATE MAY LIVE IN SHACKS IN BARREN ISLAND,

A QUIET STREET IN ST. GEORGE, STATEN ISLAND, ACROSS THE BAY

---

OLD RESIDENCES ON BROOKLYN HEIGHTS, FOR A CENTURY THE CENTER OF FASHIONABLE LIFE IN BROOKLYN

SPACIOUS WASHINGTON SQUARE, AT THE FOOT OF FIFTH AVENUE

COMPACT, ULTRA-MODERN KNICKERBOCKER VILLAGE, ON THE SITE OF A FORMER TENEMENT AREA

....

SUTTON PLACE, AT THE MANHATTAN END OF QUEEENSBORO BRIDGE, WHERE TERRACED GARDENS OVERLOOK THE EAST RIVER

WORKERS' COOPERATIVE APARTMENTS IN THE BRONX

V. NATIONALITIES

New World Symphony

ON THE island of Manhate, and in its environs," reported in 1646 ther Jogues of the Society of Jesus, "there may well be four or five hun- ced men of different sects and nations: the Director General told me that tere were men of eighteen different languages." Roundly the good father omned this confusion of tongues, likening the spirit created thereby to e "arrogance of Babel." Scarcely ten generations later, persons of foreign ck resident in New York City had increased some ten thousand times, til in 1930 the foreign born and their children accounted for almost ree-fourths of all the city's residents.

Much of what has come to be considered peculiarly "American" is the rect contribution of persons of foreign stock. Freedom of belief? The Itch of New Amsterdam, more concerned with trade than with theology, tly established a tradition of religious toleration that drew settlers from most every country of Europe. Democracy? A century before the United ates became a nation, and two centuries before New York was incorpo- ted in its present form as a city, a "Gen11 Assembly of All the Freehold- "," representing Dutch, English, French, Portuguese, Swedes, and Finns, et in 1683 and, abetted by the governor, Colonel Thomas Dongan, an shman, took steps to end a feudal and unrepresentative rule. Political cedom? When a tide of new political ideas surged through Europe in the th century, immigrants brought some of these ideas to the American lonies, and Filippo Mazzei, an Italian, wrote in an American newspaper e words "all men are by nature created free and independent" which ere paraphrased by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independ- ce. Business, and that most "American" of American institutions, the namber of Commerce? The courtly company that founded the New ork Chamber of Commerce in 1786 included among its charter members o gentlemen of Dutch origin who were born in New York, a French uguenot, four native born of English stock, an Englishman, a Scot, and yo of Irish stock, probably Irish born. Material wealth and physical

NATIONALITIES

grandeur? During the great migration from Europe after 1880, it predominantly these "men of different sects and nations" who erected pł ical New York-its streets, bridges, tunnels, railroads, wharves, and bu ings, creating with their own hands much of its material wealth, yet sor how finding leisure to leave to their city a considerable legacy in scie: and the arts, in social improvement and political leadership.

In the process the immigrant gave far more than he received. His r agrarian culture he exchanged for the poverty-stricken culture of industi society. He traded his native string orchestras and folk tunes for comm cial tumpety-tump; expressive group dances for cheap dancehalls; tra tional historic or romantic rhymed narratives for machine-made fiction a the distortion of contemporary history in the news columns. A few f traditions, encouraged by religious groups and such organizations as Int national House, remain. Thus the Swedes of New York still preserve so of their native crafts and gather round the smorgasbord; the Neapolit: annually parade the effigy of their martyred patron, San Gennaro, alc Mulberry Street between booths filled with sweetmeats, candles and off ings; the Finns celebrate a non-existent harvest, dancing the Ploughn. Waltz over a soil imprisoned in concrete; in autumn Hungarians esca to the countryside for the szureti mulatsagok, the festival of the graj Dutch children dance the Boer's romton and celebrate St. Nicholas' I on December fifth; German meistersingers hold annual singing contes the koumbaros, godfather, still maintains his position of authority in ma Greek households; Russian singers still chant epics thousands of unw. ten lines long; Ukrainians still sing Oh, Don't Go, Gritzu and The W ... Dnieper Weeps and Moans; on Easter Sunday Czech young men still ha the privilege of spilling water on young women they meet and of placi their hats in the kitchen sink to be filled with Easter eggs; Rumanians dan La Hora and celebrate on May tenth their day of independence; Yugos women occasionally wear headdresses with floating veils and capes richt embroidered and trimmed with gold braid; Poles dance the mazurka, ! krakowiak and the polka; New York orthodox Jewry still celebrates on 1 Passover the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea by Moses and the Ch dren of Israel, and in a mood of nostalgic nationalism still plants trees La'g b'omer in the rite of ever-recurring spring-millenial remembrance their agricultural past in Zion. Foreign colonies still exist in New Yo retaining their food stores, newspapers, mutual benefit societies, steamsl agencies, banks, and are still colorful, teeming and "picturesque."

But customs based on agrarian ways, however tenderly fostered, cou

NEW WORLD SYMPHONY 83

ut long survive the impact of industrial society; nor could a body of tra- Pcional modes of thought long withstand its modern equivalent-the lan- age and social practices associated with a job. Foreign-born residents of Stew York did not drop their traditional social patterns without a strug- le, but organized, as had the Yankees in New England two centuries be- fre them, their group against the world, attempting to build up their Storn cultural and economic institutions, challenging the new world in a goup instead of taking the individual plunge into American life. But the morld was moving much faster than in 17th century New England, and trate tremendous pressure of industrial society succeeded in dissolving most these national groups. No longer does a foreign colony in New York ve the status of a genuine "foreign quarter," where the leaders of the Intreign group live, contributing to its life. The foreign sections of the city susift ever more freely, disintegrate ever more quickly; each year better haid workers migrate from the upper level of the colony to other parts of alte city; each year poorer members of other foreign stocks filter in below. ofthe colony becomes less and less a center of national culture, a focusing- int of tradition-and more and more plain slum.

As recently as 1924, Konrad Bercovici wrote: "A map of Europe super- ral posed upon the map of New York could prove that the different for- Ign sections of the city live in the same proximity to one another as in talirope: the Germans near the Austrians, the Russians and the Rumanians mar the Hungarians, and the Greeks behind the Italians. People of west- men Europe live in the western side of the city. People of eastern Europe We in the eastern side of the city. Northerners live in the northern part of He city and southerners in the southern part. Those who have lived on the acher side near the sea or a river have a tendency to live here as near the da or the river as possible. ... A reformation of the same grouping takes ace every time the city expands. If the Italians move further up Harlem, rice Greeks follow them, the Spanish join them, with the French always gging behind and the Germans expanding eastward."

nu This ingenious generalization, if it was ever true, is so no longer. The Major groups of Italians, Germans, Irish and Jews are widely distributed es roughout the city. In Manhattan the Italians live in the vicinity of City ce all Park, near Battery Park, in Greenwich Village south of Washington quare, in the southeast quarter of the lower East Side, in Hell's Kitchen, nsh the northern part of Chelsea, in Madison Square, in Columbus Circle, ar the Queensboro Bridge, in Yorkville and near Harlem Bridge. They coledominate in the English Kills, Brooklyn Heights and Fort Greene sec-

NATIONALITIES

tions of Brooklyn; make up two-thirds of the inhabitants of the So Brooklyn section; and are found in fourteen other well-defined neight hoods of Brooklyn from Highland Park to Coney Island. They are w distributed throughout the Bronx and Queens, and make up 28.9 perc of the total foreign white stock in Richmond. The Jews are found on lower East Side, in Central Park West, south of Columbia University, n Mount Morris Park, near City College, and in Washington Heights, Manhattan; they make up nine-tenths of the population of Brownsville Brooklyn, are well distributed through the other neighborhoods of Bro lyn, are scattered through Queens, and are heavily concentrated in Bronx. The Irish are found in Manhattan from Battery Park to Manh tanville, where they make up one-third of the population, and in Brookl the Bronx and Queens. The Germans are scattered even more wide many of them living in Queens and Richmond. Many Greeks live in Ch sea, Manhattan; many Poles around Battery Park and on the lower E side near Tompkins Square; English in Queens and Richmond; Hung ians in Yorkville; Scandinavians in Brooklyn, the Bronx and Richmor Czechoslovaks near Battery Park and in Yorkville. Only 4,000 of 1 18,000 Chinese in New York live in Chinatown (Pell and Mott Street:

The New Yorker of foreign white stock, having made tremendous co tributions to the city for 300 years, is now in process of becoming socia invisible. As soon as he can "get on," that is, as soon as he is accept economically on the basis of individual merit without invidious referer to racial origin or cultural inheritance, he is considered to be "assimilatec 5 In New York the chief obstacle to absorption seems to be not cultural d ferences but physical traits.

The process of becoming socially invisible is accelerated by the tender. toward intermarriage in the second generation between members of diff ent foreign white stocks. Thus the ratio of intermarriage for men ai women of all nationalities, as a group, is about 14 of every 100 marriageta In the second generation, intermarriage is approximately three times frequent. Within each group, three main forces work to produce amalg mation with other groups. The first is the preponderance of marriageal men over marriageable women, the major cause of intermarriage in t. first generation. The second is a diminution of intensity of group co sciousness in the second generation. The third and most important factor the rise in economic status, which encourages intermarriage in both t. first and second generations. Strong religious preferences are factors th

NEW WORLD SYMPHONY 85

icourage intermarriage by the Jews, who intermarry the least, the Ital- is, who intermarry almost as infrequently, and the Irish.

"There are more Italians in New York City than in Rome, Milan, or uples," runs the familiar assertion, "more Irish than in Dublin, more ws than in any other city in the world." Such statements mean little, wever, unless there is first some agreement as to just who are the "Ital- is," "Irish," and "Jews." New Yorkers loosely use the term "Italian," : instance, to cover several categories of residents: a person of "Italian scent"; an "Italian-speaking" person; any citizen of Italy, regardless of ther-tongue, who lives in New York; or even a person who "looks like Italian" or has an "Italian-sounding" name. Even if the term is limited denote only a person born in Italy, the "Italian" may still be, if he mes from the Riviera, French in stock, Teutonic if he comes from the ul d'Aosta, Albanian if from Calabria or Sicily, Slav if from Cividale, or anish (Catalan) if from Sardinia. If the "Italian" came to New York ice the World War as a native of one of the "redeemed" provinces of istria, he may have been born a German, a Slovene, or a Croat.

Popular use of the term "Jew" is still more confusing. A "Jew," as the im is currently employed, may be a member of one of a dozen ethnic pups, whose skin may be white or black; who speaks Yiddish and reads ebrew, speaks Yiddish and speaks Hebrew, or who speaks and reads ither; who belongs to one of the three major groups of Judaism, or ne; whose place of origin may have been Poland, Africa, Oceania, or ‹lahoma.

Implicit in popular use of national designations, but clearly coming to ht in such general expressions as "racial groups" and "newer races" ed to denote persons of foreign stock, is a mythological concept of race, d the mystical idea of a nationality that can somehow transcend geo- agraphical and political frontiers. The United States Census Bureau, how- er, confronted with the realistic task of tabulating the population, in- ilges in no such fourth-dimensional boundary jumping. It does attempt make a rough division of the population by color; "white" (somewhat gore accurately defined by the schoolmaster in A Passage to India as binko-gray"), "Negro," and "other." The last group includes Indians, or inese, Japanese, and, since 1930, Mexicans. The native white popula- on is usually divided into two groups: (1) those of native parentage thboth parents native to the United States), (2) those of foreign parentage

es al

So ghb te per on

Ing no f eet

ep re te

hts, rille Bro in an ok vid CH

NATIONALITIES

(both parents foreign born), and of "mixed" parentage (one parent nati and the other foreign born).

The foreign white stock, as defined by the Census Bureau, is compos of two distinct elements: the foreign born white and the native white foreign or mixed parentage. Foreign born whites are classified accordi: to country of birth. Native whites of foreign or mixed parentage are clas fied according to the country of birth of the father, except that where t father is native and the mother foreign born the classification is accordi: to the country of birth of the mother.

In considering the foreign white stock resident in the five boroughs New York City, then, only the first generation (the foreign born) and t second generation (the native born of foreign or mixed parentage) can accurately examined. Accordingly, when reference is made to an "Italia. living in present-day New York, the term indicates one of the followin a person born in one of the political subdivisions of Italy existent in 193 a person both of whose parents were born in Italy, or one of whose parer was born in the United States and the other in Italy, or whose father w born in Italy and whose mother was born in some other foreign counti In the instance of the Jews, a group which has no single country of orig and for which separate treatment is given in a subsequent section of th article, figures from the American Jewish Year Book, published under t. sponsorship of the American Jewish Committee, have been used. The N groes, who play so important a part in the life of the city, are treated in separate article.

The United States Census Bureau figures for 1930 are not only the mc complete and the most reliable, but are further significant because in 19:1 the United States had the largest foreign born population in its history- 14,204,149. In that year, also, 38,727,593 were immigrants or the ch. dren of immigrants. In 1931 there were more aliens who left the Unit States than entered it, the net loss for the year 1930-31 being 10,2: aliens. Each year thereafter showed an ebbing of the tide which from 18: to 1930 had brought to the United States 37,762,012 immigrant aliens.

The stemming of this tide began with the quota laws of the ear 1920's. The first quota law had been passed in 1921. Under the quota la proclaimed in operation as of July 1, 1929 there could be admitte yearly a maximum of only about 153,900 alien immigrants. This quota d not apply to Canada, Mexico, or independent countries of Central ar South America, but did apply to such Filipinos as were not then citizen of the United States. Total exclusion, with certain exceptions, continue

NEW WORLD SYMPHONY 87

be applied, as it had been for years, to the so-called "yellow races" of hina and Japan. The Ellis Island Committee, a non-partisan group of en and women appointed in 1933 to inquire impartially into conditions Ellis Island and the welfare of immigrants generally, urged that the imigration quotas, in view of widespread unemployment, be maintained thout substantial amendment. The Committee recommended, however, e amending of the quota law to avoid the separation of husband and fe, parents and children, which has been an evil ever since the quota w was passed; and the opening of asylum to political and religious refu- es from other countries.

In 1930 the foreign white stock resident in New York City numbered 082,025, or 73.3 percent of the total population of 6,930,446. Of the roughs of New York, the Bronx led with 82 percent foreign white stock, llowed by Brooklyn with 77.9 percent, Manhattan with 67 percent, chmond with 65.5 percent, and Queens with 64.3 percent.

The Italian group alone numbered 1,070,355 or 21.1 percent of e total foreign white stock in New York. It ranked first in Brooklyn, chmond and Manhattan, but second to the Russians in the Bronx and to e Germans in Queens. The Italians were followed by the Russians with 5,072 (18.6 percent) and the Germans with 600,084 (11.8 percent). he Irish from the Irish Free State, to which could be added the 1.5 per- nt from Northern Ireland, followed with 535,034 (10.5); and the bles with 458,381 (9 percent). Austrians numbered 5.7 percent of the t:al foreign white stock in New York City, English 3.5 percent, Hungar- Is 2.3 percent, Rumanians 1.8 percent, Swedes 1.3 percent, Norwegians 12 percent; while the French, Lithuanians, Danes, Latvians and Belgians fll below one percent. Jews, variously estimated at from one and three- arters millions to two millions, illustrate the fact that the boundaries of uropean nations cut arbitrarily across minority groups. And the majority immigrants from a foreign country may not necessarily be of the domi- nt stock of their native land. An overwhelming proportion of Russians New York City, for instance, are Jews, as are large sections of the bles, Rumanians, Austrians, and others. Of Russian immigrants from 81 to 1906, it is estimated that 2 percent were Slav and 98 percent non- av, largely Jews. Of the 216,000 Russians who entered the country in 06, 125,000 were Jews, and the rest included many of Lithuanian, Finn, d German stock.

Central, southern and eastern Europe contributed over half the foreign nite stock of New York, as compared to less than one-third originating

88 NATIONALITIES

in northwestern Europe, less than one-tenth from the Americas, and I percent from all other countries. On the whole, those from northweste. Europe and Germany represented an older immigration.

The large proportion of foreign white stock among New Yorkers (73 percent compared with 31.5 percent for the United States as a whole) nothing new. It goes back, in fact, far earlier than 1820, when statisti of the country of origin of foreign immigrants to the United States beg? to be kept.

Charles M. Andrews remarks in The Colonial Period of American Ha tory that in 1664 "the Duke of York became the proprietor, not only an oddly fashioned territorial area but of an equally strange assortment peoples-Dutch, English, French, Swedes, and Finns." Of the early inha itants of New York Andrews writes, "Racially these people were of grey variety, Dutch, Walloons, French, English, Portuguese, and, after 1654 Swedes and Finns. There were a few Jews, and many Negroes from Bra: and elsewhere." On Manhattan and in the present Westchester county t .. Dutch, a trading people, constituted three-fourths of the total population the English, largely farmers, less than one-fourth, and the French an other nationalities the remainder.

To the Dutch, French, English, Irish and Scots exerting important it fluences upon early New York should be added the Germans, present fro its earliest settlement in New Amsterdam, of which the first director ge eral, Peter Minuit, is claimed as a German. By arrangement with to British government, groups of Germans were brought over from the was torn provinces of Holstein and the Palatinate in 1708 and 1709. Abo 1706 the Jews erected their first synagogue on Mill Street, the only su for a hundred years. Not until the revolutionary year 1848, however, d the great tide from northwestern Europe begin, to continue until the ear days of the Civil War. In 1820, but 8,385 immigrant aliens entered t ports of New York, Philadelphia and Boston. In the decade 1821-183c total of but 143,439 new immigrants arrived, as contrasted with a tot for the decade 1841-1850 of 1,713,251. f1:

In Ireland, Scotland and England, in Germany and northwestern Er rope, peasant peoples, racked by wars, decimated by famine, repressed governments still retaining many of the elements of feudalism, listened incredible tales of America-and believed. Agents of the firm of Rawsi and McMurray of New York were typical of many others in making su os assertions as that (1837) a migrant from the British Isles could get "£

NEW WORLD SYMPHONY

itish money per month and his diet, as wages; that everyone was on a rfect equality in America; that the common laboring man received high iges and sat at the same table with his master ... and that with ease an dependent fortune could be made." No sooner did they touch the Amer- in shore, however, than these hopefuls fell prey to "a new class of afters-runners, agents, brokers, etc., who lived on the immigrants, find- g the new arrivals gullible because of their inexperience in the Ameri- situation" (L. G. Brown, Immigration ). These agents, often of the untry of the very people they victimized, herded the new arrivals into arding houses, and "proprietors of these establishments were always in- t'ested in giving insufficient and indifferent food and accommodations. In 6 cases their profits were measured by this economy, and in some in- ances, when they made a bad speculation in relation to a ship's entire ssengers, cruelty, evasion, and neglect were resorted to as the only eans by which they could escape bankruptcy. ... The buildings employed ere usually selected in the suburbs of the city, rather for economy than t adaptation, and almost necessarily deficient in ventilation. .. . So odi- s did these places become that hundreds of sick and destitute quitted em in terror and disgust." In 1830 the Mayor of New York sent a mes- ge to the President of the United States concerning the pauperism and me being bred among the immigrants in the city, who were crowded to what a generation before had been the homes of the old Knicker- ckers and their descendants, but which had become filthy and over- wded tenements. In 1848 a committee of the New York Assembly in- stigated and reported on frauds perpetrated on immigrants, and in 1852 State legislative committee was appointed to investigate the work of the ew York commissioners of immigration. Not until 1864, when the first uve of immigration had passed its peak, did Congress establish a gen- al immigration assistance office in New York City.

Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.

New York panorama : a comprehensive view of the metropolis, Part 9

Author: Publication date: 1938 Publisher: New York : Random House Number of Pages: 630

Author:
Publication date: 1938
Publisher: New York : Random House
Number of Pages: 630